The Prestige of Anger

The quoted words below were written by Leon Wiesetier in The Washington Post (22 June 2016)
"How voters’ personal suffering overtook reason — and brought us Donald Trump"
"... we seem to be living in a country of personal injuries. In our political season this takes the form of a politics of grievance. The prestige of anger in our politics has grown disproportionately to anger’s justifications and exceeded them, so that voting appears to have become more an explosion of feeling than an expression of thought. (It is the voters, after all, to whom demagogues owe their ascendancy. The wisdom of crowds!) Valid grievances have turned poisonous and welcomed intolerance and untruth into their orbit. Outrage, a fine political emotion, has degenerated into resentment and hatred. A shocking number of Americans seem more conspiratorial than deliberative. The responsibilities of policy are overwhelmed in our debates by the wounds of collective memory, recent and ancient. All this does not signify the end of democracy, and democracy is not to be blamed for it. Democracy requires of us that we live by our nerves. But it also requires of us that we keep our heads; and if reason and respect are democratic qualities, then there is a decidedly undemocratic spirit loose in the land. We are punishing our politics with our pain, when the solutions for our pain may be found only in our politics."
These words are merely the part that struck me the most powerfully and vividly ...
To read the entire article go to this address.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/22/how-voters-personal-suffering-overtook-reason-and-brought-us-donald-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Irony

I was shown the cover letter for an application for an executive/administrative position in a professional organisation from which this excerpt comes:

"... I am know [sic] for my attention to detail ..."

 I had to smile.

The Day of Departure

It's still dark and our flight is not until 10:10 am ... Arriving at the airport and checking in three hours before take off is the cause of this pre-dawn arising. All packed last night except for the toiletries kit. All the baggage complies with all of the airlines' allowances. We are five carriers for the 10 flights - 13, if you count Aegean hubbing at Athens between Rhodes and Crete as well as Crete and Santorini! There are over 20 hotel bookings and seven cars rented. The 1977 trip year on the road was nothing but backpack, travel cheques and airline ticket. How things have changed?!

Off to Singapore today to stay with friends and former colleagues who teach at the American International School in Singapore. We are laying over for two days. Don't want to rush into the jaws of a vacation. Anyway, A Singapore sling in at the Long Bar at Raffles seems like a civilised way to start the journey.

Leaving the house in the hands of Kristian and Julianne who are moving in to looked after Holi, the Kelpie/Jack Russell dynamo who keeps us company.

Need to get up and go - only five minutes until the appointed time. More to come

Three Days before Departure

The airlines' (Singapore and Lufthansa) respective websites encourage hope that the planned trip to Germany, Turkey, Greece and the USA will go ahead more or less as planned. Eyjafjallajokull - a real challenge to pronounce - has certainly taken centre stage in Lyn and my lives as we have nearly three months of overseas travel planned and the likelihood of enormous complications being created as the ash billowed from Hephaestus' little Icelandic chimney. -What is the Norse god of volcanoes called? Is it another of Thor's portfolios? More likely responsibility for volcanoes falls within Loki's brief as eruptions are at best a form of mischief ...

We have proceeded as if no disruption to our plans would occur, intending to begin on Thursday contacting Flight Centre and/or airlines directly to determine if we needed to adjust to the travel chaos that has been reported in the press, on TV and on the Internet. Friends are scheduled to fly to Europe today, so if they are flying with Qantas, they will be either staying home or making alternate arrangements.

For now, we will continue to pack, make arrangements for our affairs to be attended by Kristian and keep our fingers crossed. If we get away, I will make more postings about our travels. NB this is my first ever blog.